Season Review 2006/7 Part 3

In fairness, the second third before the split had gone reasonably well but the warning signs were there. A huge Motherwell support travelled to Airdrie in the cup and though we won 1-0 the performance was poor. They could have snatched a late equaliser and Danny Murphy was given an absolute roasting at left back. Given that he was by far the most highly rated of the new signings this was worrying. The weather gave us an extended break so we only had one game before the next round of the cup. We lost at Easter Road but with an infinitely better performance than last time.

However in the end of January Richie Foran departed for Southend and we only just held onto Scott McDonald who yet again did himself no favours with his comments to the media.

The queue at Airdrie

But yet again Skippy produced on the park. Morton brought a massive following but we dealt with them professionally even if we weren't great and we had another quarter final to look forward to. St Johnstone came out beside us and while this was definitely not a gimmie tie it was hard to complain about getting a lower league team at home at that stage. In the next games we produced a win coming from behind at Falkirk before McDonald headed in the only goal to give us our first league victory over Inverness at Fir Park. We were somewhat lucky to hold on to a 0-0 at Love Street but even so, we went into the quarter final - moved to a Wednesday night for TV - unbeaten in four and having only lost one goal in that period. Surely we would be booking another visit to Hampden?

Unfortunately not. We didn't realise that the players had actually given up for the season already and what followed was humiliating.

Buzz saves at Falkirk

St Johnstone did play well of course but we were shockingly bad. Whether it was bottle, lack of fight, lack of skill or a combination of all three is hard to tell but the Saints gubbed us. Ross McCormack pulled back a late one to make the score 2-1 but that didn't tell the whole story as we had been run ragged all night. By this point we had entered what bacame a run of one win in thirteen to end the season. Had we defeated St Johnstone the league form probably wouldn't have collapsed and Malpas would have had a semi final to add to his record. Instead this was the final straw for most people and all but the most determined Malpas supporters would drift away from him and things got to the stage of being hilariously bad.

A 1-1 draw at Tannadice was sandwiched between consecutive home defeats to Hearts and Aberdeen. In all these games we were very unlucky at points but that shouldn't disguise the fact that by now we were, by and large, terrible. The players struggled to kick the ball 10 yards to one another and while the arrival of Kristian Vadocz on loan was finally being shown to be worthwhile it didn't make up for the certainty of Kerr and McDonald leaving in the summer. Kerr and Foran may have split the support but there is no doubt they were potentially amongst our better players and replacing Skippy - who had carried the team alone at times - would not be easy either. Accordingly the fans were downbeat and the team did little to lift them. We managed to defeat Dunfermline 2-0 - who scored both? Go on, take a guess - before we finished our pre-split fixtures with two defeats against Killie and Celtic.